


Lucky Man

by Ygern



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Comedy of Errors, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 15:55:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17707235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ygern/pseuds/Ygern
Summary: I randomly stumbled across a post on Tumblr that discussed a possible future series in an interview with Laurence Fox and I liked the image of Hathaway interrupting Lewis on a golf course.I'm sure that if a Hathaway series ever gets made, it won't even be remotely like this, so I'm getting my story in before ITV goes and destroys my dreams.Tumblr link: https://penguinteacup.tumblr.com/post/150922908240/laurence-fox-did-an-interview-with-the-mirror-and





	Lucky Man

 

It wasn’t the best of starts. CS Moody seemed an alright kind of bloke, and he seemed to run a decent nick, but on her first day at Thames Valley Sergeant Lammy was at a loose end and unsure what to do with herself. She’d been told by Moody that her assigned DI Hathaway was on his way back from an annual trip to some charity in Croatia, and wouldn’t make it in until tomorrow due to a strike in Paris.

So she was stuck in an empty office, twiddling her thumbs and switching between feeling guilty for doing nothing and feeling bored. What sort of a name was Hathaway anyway? She knew there was an Anne Hathaway, wife of Shakespeare. Then there was the other Anne Hathaway, who was a real looker and famous for no knickers at some red carpet event. Lammy presumed that DI Hathaway wore knickers, and probably didn’t know Shakespeare personally. After four hours of logging onto her computer and messing around with all the new employee orientation files that made her brain want to die she decided she had earned a coffee and headed off to the canteen.

“He’s alright enough,” This was the opinion of one Hooper who had invited himself to join her while she tried to swallow the dry ham sandwich and over-boiled coffee she’d bought herself. “Alright for a fast-track nob. Got an opinion about everything, with bells on, does His Nibs. But he’s fair. His last sergeant had no complaints, except for she got a lecture on everything she never wanted to know about when he was in the mood for it. That’s what you get with a degree from Cambridge.”

Lammy decided she hoped Hooper fell down a manhole sometime soon in the future, his breath smelled of cheese and he seemed to think that everyone wanted his hulking company. On the other hand her mental image of DI Hathaway was now of Anne Hathaway with perfectly styled eyebrows, an Elizabethan ruff and a mortar board on her head.

The following morning Lammy arrived on time, hoping that her new day would be better than yesterday. To her horror there was already someone in the office, making her appear late even though she wasn’t and it turned out that DI Hathaway, dark waistcoat, dark suit, shorn blonde head, was nothing like either of the Annes, except for maybe the Shakespeare angle. Three minutes with this Hathaway and she was almost surprised he hadn’t recited a sonnet, he sounded so plummy. He seemed okay though, not over-friendly, not mean. All business but reasonable. He was tall, so very tall; and thin like he never ate enough, and sunburned from whatever he’d been doing in Croatia. But he himself remained a mystery for the most part. Her new guv was not a sharer.

They were in a field on the edge of Wytham Woods on a chilly morning and her boss was wearily stubbing out a fag on the underside of his shoe before carefully stuffing it into some metal portable ashtray. He smoked a lot so she was grateful that the fleet let her have her own vehicle. To be fair to him, he never smoked in the car, certainly not whenever they had to share. But she could see that he no more appreciated a 5AM call than she did and was probably running on nicotine and black coffee. He seemed to spot something and lengthened his stride and headed over to a small knot of SOCO people, all kitted out in blue and white scene suits.

“Ah, the wanderer returns!”

A blonde woman, pretty but no longer young, was talking to her guv. He smiled, and laughed silently, apparently this was some sort of private joke between them. Then he did something Lammy hadn’t thought him capable of: he leaned over and kissed the woman on the cheek and she grinned at him fondly.

“Good to see you, Doctor Hobson. This is my new sergeant. Sergeant Lammy, this is our pathologist, Doctor Hobson.”

The doctor nodded professionally at her, gesturing with her gloved hands that she was not in a position to do the conventional shaking hands thing.

“Just a head’s up, you’ll be invited to a barbecue in a week or so, just as soon as he’s settled from getting back from Germany,” the doctor continued. DI Hathaway smiled and nodded.

“I look forward to it.”

Doctor Hobson smiled sunnily at him, and Lammy suddenly saw what a beautiful woman she was. Must have been a real looker in her day too.

Then they were all business again, and the doctor was fielding DI Hathaway’s questions with what appeared to be her usual quirky way; a slightly irreverent manner, if Lammy was any judge. It didn’t seem to faze DI Hathaway though, normally a man with a short fuse with anyone arsing around at work. Clearly, these two were friends, and clearly the regular rules did not apply. That said, nothing that passed between them was not on point. Lammy shrugged mentally. Her Inspector was mates with the pathologist. Noted.

A few hours later and DI Hathaway seemed to be seeing a link with a past case.

“I think we need to go and talk to someone,” was how DI Hathaway had heralded their field trip. ‘Someone’ had turned out to be an retired gent on a golf course, not old as such, but older than the people Lammy saw around Thames Valley CID.

The gent smiled when he saw them coming, traipsing over the field in the middle of the afternoon.

“So, how goes the great cambuca experiment?” said DI Hathaway, smiling enigmatically again.

The gent rolled his eyes and looked ruefully at the bag filled with clubs at his feet.

“Glad I decided to hire these instead of buying them. Christ, what’s the point? Just - pushing balls into holes.”

“One could, of course, say the same thing about much of life, in a metaphorical way, of course,” said her Inspector.

“Of course,” said the man rolling his eyes, apparently not particularly chagrined by the mild mocking he was getting.

“Doctor Hobson says there’s a barbecue in offing,” DI Hathaway continued. It appeared to be neither a question nor a statement.

The man smiled and nodded.

“Sergeant Lammy, this is my previous governor, Inspector Lewis. I’m hoping he’ll be able to give us some advice on our case,” her DI added.

Lammy noticed that the man immediately looked interested and deposited the golf club he was holding into the caddy as if it was personally offending him.

“Good to meet you, Sergeant Lammy, please call me Robbie,” the man held out his hand and smiled.

Lammy shook the offered hand and half envied DI Hathaway that he’d had such a sweet gent as his DI. Robbie Lewis didn’t strike her as the sort of bloke who delivered lectures on anything ever. Also, he had twinkling blue eyes and was in remarkably good nick for a man his age. Good legs, firm backside. Doctor Hobson was a lucky woman.

Lammy was perplexed. It was Friday and she was meeting her girlfriend for a drink after work. She was in a rush because she and DI Hathaway had been busy until late trying to tie up some loose ends on the case. Lammy was already impressed with her DI. He attacked cases as if they personally offended him and after she had done some surreptitious checking, she discovered it appeared he closed cases at a ferocious rate. That boded well for her future. That wasn’t what was currently worrying her though.

What worried her was almost bumping into Doctor Hobson just as she was exiting a fancy restaurant, one that Lammy wasn’t going to be visiting any time soon, not with the salary she was currently on. That wasn’t the issue though. The doctor had her arm around a man that wasn’t Inspector ‘Call Me Robbie’ Lewis, and she and her handsome man-friend seemed to be smiling at each other in a private, intimate kind of a way. Lammy wasn’t sure what to do. The obvious answer was nothing. It wasn’t as if it was any of her business. It wasn’t as if it was any of her guv’s business either, not really, so she couldn’t say it to him either. Still, she felt badly for Robbie Lewis. He’d seemed a sound bloke, kind and sweet. He didn’t deserve this. Unless. Maybe they were swingers? Maybe this was all okay? Weird but okay? Maybe they were a happy threesome; Robbie Lewis, Doctor Hobson and Glamour Boy over there? Lammy tried not to think about it. The sex lives of other people were not her problem. Maybe DI Hathaway knew and didn’t care. Maybe he didn’t know. Thank God she had Khilna.

Lammy had shelved her secret bit of knowledge for a while. It wasn’t relevant to her job or to her private life, so why stress about it? Her boss either knew and didn’t mind, or had no idea and she wasn’t going to be the one who said anything. She made a point of keeping her head down whenever they met Doctor Hobson and keeping their interactions to polite and professional one line sentences. The same could not be said for her boss who occasionally indulged in an impromptu pun war with the doctor, which they both evidently enjoyed, no matter how inappropriate. They were at the site of a wedding reception turned tragedy.

“It was an emotional wedding,” Doctor Hobson was saying.

“Even the cake was in tiers,” DI Hathaway replied solemnly. The two of them locked eyes and both sets of mouths quirked slightly before they continued as if nothing toward had been said at all.

Lammy wanted to roll her eyes, laugh and scream at both of them. Preferably all at once.

It was Friday again, and Khilna had booked them a place in a restaurant to celebrate her own promotion to Assistant Managing Director of the company she worked for. With this they were finally in reach of buying a house and getting married. The sun was only beginning to sink and the sky was perfect and Lammy smiled to herself as she neared her destination. Life was sweet. She stared out at the river as the sun caught its waters, flashing a blinding gold into the air around her. That was why she almost missed them. Her boss was walking along the river’s edge. A figure was coming along in the opposite direction. They met and her boss - her upright, proper boss - nuzzled gently into the other figure and they kissed softly and then the pair changed directions together and walked off together, arm in arm. The new angle made it clear, the other person was Robbie Lewis.

She officially failed as a detective.  
Now that she knew, it was obvious and she was an idiot.

She’d somehow missed the text messages to her boss’s phone that made his eyes go all soft. She’d been oblivious to those mornings where he’d been uncharacteristically flushed and smiley. The worst: she’d managed to miss the gold band plainly in view on the fourth finger of his left hand.

It was half-humiliating when her guv and Doctor Hobson asked her if she and her girlfriend would like to join them at the barbecue. She tried to soothe her guilty conscience by bringing multiple overpriced bottles of wine as a peace offering, with Khilna rolling her eyes every step of the way.

“They don’t know the things that have been going on in your head,” she pointed out.

“I know. But I do,” said Lammy sulkily.

Her girlfriend giggled and hoisted the bag containing several of the bottles over her shoulder. Doctor Hobson answered the door and seemed surprised and delighted at the range of alcoholic offerings.

“Let me introduce you to my partner, Franco. And you know James and Robbie, of course.”

Khilna waggled her eyebrows at Lammy, and stepped past her into the house. Lammy sighed and followed her grinning girlfriend inside.

Her boss looked very different in a social setting. He was dressed in layered t-shirts and olive fatigue trousers and looked more like an indie rock god than the Victorian gentleman that he typically called to mind. He and Robbie Lewis were side by side, not touching but so obviously together that she could feel Khilna laughing at her without even looking. And there was Glamour Boy, who apparently went by the name of Franco, partner of Laura Hobson and wielder of the barbecue tongs. Fortunately, as Khilna had said, no-one knew the strange permutations that had haunted her thoughts in recent days.

Robbie fixed his eyes on her as she joined the group sitting around the patio.

“Hi, Ayesha. Glad you and Khilna could make it. Just relax, James will get you a drink.”

Typical that Robbie Lewis could make it sound like she was doing them a favour, when in fact they were letting her into their circle. DI Hathaway handed her a glass of wine and offered Khilna a bottle of beer before seating himself again next to his husband and giving him a little smile that was returned with interest. Fortunately none of her imaginings were likely to appear on her annual review. Apparently she could miss things under her own nose. Apparently she could jump to crazy conclusions. As the evening wore on her DI unwound further and she witnessed several casual hugs between him and Doctor Hobson, they appeared to be the link that held the group together.

Nevertheless, when the evening wore on and the last charcoals on the fire glimmered weakly in the darkness, he once again took his seat next to Robbie and the pair leaned into each other automatically, gold hair against dark brown, fingers twined, and just once, briefly Robbie raised their joined hands to his lips before they settled back against each other again. Hathaway looked perfectly at peace, there were only traces of the man she knew from the office.

Apparently it was her boss, Hathaway, who was the lucky man.


End file.
